MIT Campus Guide

The MIT Campus Guide App, a companion to the book MIT Campus Guide by Douglas Shand-Tucci, from Princeton Architectural Press, offers descriptions of 50 buildings and, following Donald Shand Tucci’s selection for the print volume, eight outdoor sculptures and five focal points. The app will introduce you to important urban spots, invite you to look around and contemplate different moments in the planning history of MIT, formed by the vision of architects such as William W. Bosworth, I. M. Pei or Eero Saarinen, and the urban environments in Boston and Cambridge. Reproduced in black and white on the list are ‘ghost buildings’ – structures of importance for MIT’s history, that either do not existent anymore, or are no longer associated with MIT.

Prof. Mark Jarzombek initiated the project and provided critical feedback, Christianna Bonin, a PhD candidate in the History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture + Art program at MIT, made a selection of the most important buildings and provided drafts of many entries. Prof. Dietrich Neumann edited and amended the manuscript. While we used many of the photographs John Horner (JH) had created for the print edition, a large number of additional images were provided by architectural photographer Hassan Bagheri (HB). We are most grateful to Jon Duval and Gary van Zante of the MIT Museum for providing more than 100 historic photographs. These were amended with a few historic photographs from the Historic American Building Survey (HABS) and contemporary postcards (PC). Gokce Kinayoglu (DMRLab) coordinated the software design and development process and created the iOS version. Padideh Sotoodeh worked on the Android version of the app.